1102-1106, literary matters dominate events
Oh he was very learned you know, spent all his days in elegant debate with his family and neighbours ... a true son of Glasgow
Well his reading was a bit disrupted in the war with the English, but to be fair when Duncan the Cruel suggested popping along for a meeting ... you did tend to pop along [1]
Now while all that was going on, him and his fellow Earls got together to have a nice arcane discussion about inheritence rules.
All very erudite they were, well except they decided that talking was not really that much fun
so they all followed that salad bloke, Waldorf or something foreign, not like our healthy deep fried foods, off to war
And it was at this time that Rab read that he could make himself a Duke [2]
But grandfather what did you do in the war?
Well if it wasn't for me, it would have been different
We won ths big huge battle at Abercorn, and one of my arrows was decisive. There was this Edinburger skulking around the baggage trains ... obviously planning a bit of theft .., well I did for him [3]
But grandfather, wasn't he on our side?
Not after he was dead
Anyway, Murdoch his son, was made the next Commander,
got the nickname little rupert for some reason ... must have been because he looked like a bear?
and was married off to a Crovan to strengthen Rab's claim on the Western Isles
and he was soo ungrateful ...
bad as you bunch with his constant whingeings
and in the war we proved that the Edinburgh bunch really have nae ...
Grandfather, the children are still up
... staying power
and then once that was cleared up, he wanted to let wee Neil out, since he could no longer inherit.
But it seemed that now Rab was a Duke he couldn't let out someone he'd imprisoned when he was a mere Earl
bit of a problem for Neil of course, still it was nice that the Bishop was popping in to see him on a regular basis.
Still Rab seemed to take the disappointment of it all in his stride [4]
[1] – one of my fellow Earls managed to get in a claim before mine, but Duncan is pretty keen to claim lands for his underlings.
[2] – not actually sure why this came up now, as I've held Galloway for about 25 years. But the option popped up at the same time as the Civil War so that maybe the explanation.
[3] – result, first war, and my marshall dies, somethings just never change.
[4] – well that was wierdly successful, I'm now up a tier and a direct vassal of the King, we've beaten up Edinburgh and the inheritence laws now make it a lot easier to manage things.